Abstract

This paper is concerned with development of a predictive tool to determine the heat diffusionprofile for heated water discharge into a body of stagnant receiving water. The process makesuse of a thermal imaging camera to measure the discharge plume from a range of sites inorder to observe the actual discharge and then to provide a mathematical model that willallow British Waterways to satisfy the Environmental Agency regulations. In addition thesites are replicated in a laboratory environment with a scale model tank that allows themixing zones to be measured under variable conditions. In this case the heated water is dyedto provide a visual plume in addition to the thermal image. The plume and mixing zone arethen predicted using appropriate software such as Matlab, the model being optimised toreflect the real measured discharges.